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With all the crap Adobe gets for Flash, this is where their primary area of expertise lies. I've been using Photoshop from when there were no layers and very li

by hkuo 17y ago

With all the crap Adobe gets for Flash, this is where their primary area of expertise lies. I've been using Photoshop from when there were no layers and very limited number of undos. They never fail to deliver something incredibly useful and time-saving with each iteration.

fnid2 17y ago
I'm still using Photoshop 4 that I got in 1996 or so. There are layers, but only one undo. I don't use it enough to justify the upgrade, but I have done a lot of everything in this video from time to time and it is extremely time consuming. This is quite an advancement. I usually give Adobe a lot of crap, but this is really very nice. But I wonder... are tools like this to manipulate reality making really less and less interesting. Are losing our love of reality because of the dreams we can so easily create?
- jacobolus 17y ago
  > it is extremely time consuming. Most importantly, it’s not especially interesting. Figuring out what needs fixing takes a human eye, but actually cutting a distracting pole or bit of lens flare out of a picture is work for a patient robot. > Are losing our love of reality because of the dreams we can so easily create? Um... no? How do you define “reality”? If it depends on what can be shown in photographs, then the time to have this discussion was around 1850.
  - brfox 17y ago
    Lens flare is kind of nice sometimes. I like how CG movies add it in to make it look more realistic.
- jamesbritt 17y ago
  "Are losing our love of reality because of the dreams we can so easily create?" Our dreams drive us to create a better reality.
JeanPierre 17y ago
The most impressive thing about it, is that they still manage to put in so much useful stuff in such a small amount of time. If this keeps up, I doubt I'll ever use more than 30 minutes to photoshop an image. Ever.
- jacobolus 17y ago
  > they still manage to put in so much useful stuff in such a small amount of time. What do you mean? It’s a 20-year-old program. If every year or two you implement 3 or 4 SIGGRAPH papers, after a decade you too will have quite a nifty thing. > I doubt I'll ever use more than 30 minutes to photoshop an image. Ever. Depends what your job description is. If you’re a retoucher paid by the photo, this is already pretty much true. If you’re a perfectionist artist, it will probably never be.
  - JeanPierre 17y ago
    I'm not into SIGGRAPH papers, though if they implement those, it would explain the short time it takes to make. I am, however, still amazed by the possibilities of Photoshop: Photoshop shows us how the human brain is capable of finding patterns in nature and copy that realistically. Surely, the latter comment was an overstatement if you're working professionally with Photoshop. But I do think it sooner or later would be some truth in my statement: If Photoshop manage to imitate realism well enough that humans don't see mistakes, then the only thing they would have to work on is speeding up the algorithm. (in that area of Photoshop, of course)
- ra 17y ago
  What impresses me is how simple the interface is for this new feature... select, delete ... wait... done.
apu 17y ago
Not to take away all of the credit, but this is very heavily based on a research paper, as pointed out elsewhere in the comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1215894 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1215894 (2 of the 4 authors are at Adobe Research, while the others are at Princeton Univ.)
- connellybarnes 17y ago
  Hi this is Connelly I'm the first author on that paper. Adobe ATL's business model is that they do research and then put it in products. So Dan took the code I wrote for a summer internship (The paper you referenced. To be precise, we actually did the work in the fall before SIGGRAPH, because I only thought of the algorithm on my last week as an intern) and put it in Photoshop. So we're not ripping off anyone but ourselves :-). By the way a shout to pg. I have mad respect for him and Jim Clark, both computer scientists/entrepreneurs who have worked really hard and selflessly to get engineers more equity over the wealth they create.
  - apu 17y ago
    Awesome! Yeah, I realized that two of the authors were at Adobe and had a suspicion that you might have been an intern there as well, but wasn't sure. As a computer vision researcher, I guess it sometimes irks me when I see great research work done, but credit for which often falls on the company that commercializes it. Glad to hear that you were yourself involved at Adobe, and it seems like you've gotten a fair amount of good publicity from this great work. Congratulations!

by hkuo 17y ago

fnid2 17y ago

I'm still using Photoshop 4 that I got in 1996 or so. There are layers, but only one undo. I don't use it enough to justify the upgrade, but I have done a lot of everything in this video from time to time and it is extremely time consuming. This is quite an advancement. I usually give Adobe a lot of crap, but this is really very nice. But I wonder... are tools like this to manipulate reality making really less and less interesting. Are losing our love of reality because of the dreams we can so easily create?

jacobolus 17y ago
> it is extremely time consuming. Most importantly, it’s not especially interesting. Figuring out what needs fixing takes a human eye, but actually cutting a distracting pole or bit of lens flare out of a picture is work for a patient robot. > Are losing our love of reality because of the dreams we can so easily create? Um... no? How do you define “reality”? If it depends on what can be shown in photographs, then the time to have this discussion was around 1850.
- brfox 17y ago
  Lens flare is kind of nice sometimes. I like how CG movies add it in to make it look more realistic.
jamesbritt 17y ago
"Are losing our love of reality because of the dreams we can so easily create?" Our dreams drive us to create a better reality.

JeanPierre 17y ago

The most impressive thing about it, is that they still manage to put in so much useful stuff in such a small amount of time. If this keeps up, I doubt I'll ever use more than 30 minutes to photoshop an image. Ever.

jacobolus 17y ago
> they still manage to put in so much useful stuff in such a small amount of time. What do you mean? It’s a 20-year-old program. If every year or two you implement 3 or 4 SIGGRAPH papers, after a decade you too will have quite a nifty thing. > I doubt I'll ever use more than 30 minutes to photoshop an image. Ever. Depends what your job description is. If you’re a retoucher paid by the photo, this is already pretty much true. If you’re a perfectionist artist, it will probably never be.
- JeanPierre 17y ago
  I'm not into SIGGRAPH papers, though if they implement those, it would explain the short time it takes to make. I am, however, still amazed by the possibilities of Photoshop: Photoshop shows us how the human brain is capable of finding patterns in nature and copy that realistically. Surely, the latter comment was an overstatement if you're working professionally with Photoshop. But I do think it sooner or later would be some truth in my statement: If Photoshop manage to imitate realism well enough that humans don't see mistakes, then the only thing they would have to work on is speeding up the algorithm. (in that area of Photoshop, of course)
ra 17y ago
What impresses me is how simple the interface is for this new feature... select, delete ... wait... done.

apu 17y ago

Not to take away all of the credit, but this is very heavily based on a research paper, as pointed out elsewhere in the comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1215894 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1215894 (2 of the 4 authors are at Adobe Research, while the others are at Princeton Univ.)

connellybarnes 17y ago
Hi this is Connelly I'm the first author on that paper. Adobe ATL's business model is that they do research and then put it in products. So Dan took the code I wrote for a summer internship (The paper you referenced. To be precise, we actually did the work in the fall before SIGGRAPH, because I only thought of the algorithm on my last week as an intern) and put it in Photoshop. So we're not ripping off anyone but ourselves :-). By the way a shout to pg. I have mad respect for him and Jim Clark, both computer scientists/entrepreneurs who have worked really hard and selflessly to get engineers more equity over the wealth they create.
- apu 17y ago
  Awesome! Yeah, I realized that two of the authors were at Adobe and had a suspicion that you might have been an intern there as well, but wasn't sure. As a computer vision researcher, I guess it sometimes irks me when I see great research work done, but credit for which often falls on the company that commercializes it. Glad to hear that you were yourself involved at Adobe, and it seems like you've gotten a fair amount of good publicity from this great work. Congratulations!